Trudeau appeal grants him a sentence review

Nanci G. Hutson

Updated 11:45 pm, Monday, April 28, 2014

Former Newtown Oil owner and Norwalk developer William Trudeau Jr., serving a 16-year sentence for fraud and conspiracy, will have his sentence reviewed after a recent ruling by a federal appeals court.

In February last year, Trudeau was convicted of one count of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, mail fraud and wire fraud for his part in a multi-million-dollar mortage and bank fraud scheme. The jury dismissed seven other counts.

Trudeau, 50, is serving his sentence at a federal prison in Devens, Mass.

After his conviction in 2013, his legal team expected their client to be sentenced to no more than 14 months, and possibly to time served, because he had already served a year in prison. Instead, United States District Court Judge Janet Hall sentenced him to 16 years, based on her stated belief that he was indeed guilty of all the crimes for which he was accused.

Trudeau appealed on several points, but the only aspect the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled has merit was that Hall committed a procedural error by failing to use correct statutory maximum sentences for the two counts for which he was convicted. The appeal states that Hall based her sentencing on a possible maximum of 40 years when the actual maximum was 20.

The appeals court judges rejected Trudeau's claim that his sentence was unconstitutionally severe and violated his Fifth Amendment rights, concluding that it was "well within the range of permissible decisions."

Trudeau's attorney, Ross Garber of Hartford said he could not comment on the case, but the April 15 ruling referred to and rejected his argument, backed by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, that Trudeau's sentence was not commensurate with the crime.

Assistant United States Attorney Rahul Kale disagreed with that assertion in his filings with the appeals court, arguing that Trudeau's criminal past, which includes serving 22 months in federal prison for a wire fraud conviction in 2003, allowed Hall to take that into account in calculating a sentence.

It was not immediately clear whether Hall would be required to hold a full resentencing hearing or merely to restate the reasoning for her sentence.

Trudeau's case has attracted considerable attention. A columnist for Forbes magazine, Walter Pavio, questioned the severity of the sentence when it was announced last year, and the Connecticut Law Tribune, a statewide legal newspaper, recently ran a lengthy analysis of the appeals court ruling. Pavio suggested the issue might have to be resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court, as did the criminal defense lawyers' association.

In the early 2000s, Trudeau was accused of bilking 1,400 fuel oil customers of money for prepaid oil deliveries and was ordered to pay $260,000 in restitution.